That, my friends, is and always will be a load of bullshit.

If there really are any significant number of people that felt that way, I’m shocked. You are completely right, that is total bullshit. That’s a stupid enough belief that I never even considered that it was what you were referring to.

I assumed you were talking about the people who have been talking non-stop since the end of the 2004 season about finding a way to trade or not re-sign A-Rod. Those people have occasionally had a point.

No, it’s not a ridiculous argument, and it was the original argument.

If anyone actually did think simply getting rid of A-Rod and not replacing him was a good thing, that’s just stupid and was never worth mentioning, let alone discussing.

Right, which is why we’re not discussing that.

The discussion was more along the lines of replacing A-Rod with a lesser (but not bad) 3B and spending the rest of the money elsewhere.

Who knows. You just asked if anyone had an answer, so I threw out one of the more popular answers people gave.

And yes, I do remember Beltran. I also remember that the Yanks were paying ARod about a third of what Jeter, Giambi and Moose were making at the time. And they had just signed up to give too much money to Randy Johnson because George had wanted him for four years.

That’s a combination of overstating your case and the fact that Jeter and Giambi had really backloaded contracts. That doesn’t mean A-Rod wasn’t making a significant amount.

And “other people made a lot of money too” is irrelevant to the question of whether keeping A-Rod was the right decision or not.

This is admittedly less of an issue for the Yanks than for other teams with more limited financial resources.